Coming into the new season, West Ham prepared to face Aston Villa at the London Stadium in a home fixture. Although Villa have been one of the best Premier League teams in the recent seasons, West Ham were expected to put a good performance in the first match.
Also, Premier League journalist Paul Merson predicted the game to be a 1-1 draw. Further, Villa had lost their opening matches of the Premier League in the last three seasons. Thus, Julen Lopetegui's side were looking to take some points from this match.
West Ham face 2-1 defeat against Aston Villa in the first match
In the starting lineup, manager Julen Lopetegui started Konstantinos Mavropanos at center back and Vladimir Coufal at right back. New signings Jean-Clair Todibo and Aaron Wan-Bissaka had recently joined West Ham, so they will make their Hammers debut from the next match.
In the midfield, Tomas Soucek started alongside Lucas Paqueta in a box-to-box midfield role. New signing, Guido Rodriguez started as the defensive midfielder. However, the defence was underwhelming yet again as West Ham conceded the opening goal inside five minutes. After a few minutes, Aston Villa nearly made it 2-0 but Max Kilman defended well and the ball came off the post.
Just before half time, Aston Villa brought down Tomas Soucek inside the box and Lucas Paqueta scored the penalty to make it 1-1. In the second half, Aston Villa scored again to make it 2-1 with young forward Jhon Duran scoring his first goal of the new season.
In the last minute, West Ham had a brilliant chance but Soucek couldn't score the equalising goal. Overall, it was another underwhelming performance from the defence and manager Julen Lopetegui needs to start Jean-Clair Todibo and Aaron Wan-Bissaka from the next game to improve West Ham's performance.